Strengthening trust in App Store reviews

Shopify App Store
1

Reviews on the Shopify App Store are foundational to a fair marketplace. They’re how merchants find the right apps, and how developers earn trust for the products they build. Reviews are one of the most important ways merchants decide which apps to trust. To keep that signal honest, we’re making two changes to how we handle review incentivization and fake reviews. We’re announcing both together, and here’s what partners need to know.

1. A dedicated policy on review incentivization

What it is: Offering, unlocking, or withholding app features in exchange for a merchant leaving a review.

What’s changing: Rules on this practice previously lived within the Partner Program Agreement, which made them easy to overlook. We’re introducing a dedicated App Store requirement on review incentivization with clear consequences.

The consequence: When an app is found to be incentivizing reviews, we’ll remove a significant portion of its reviews. We’ve already identified apps engaged in this practice, and we’ll be enforcing this policy as soon as the change goes live.

2. Stronger fake-review detection

What it is: Reviews that don’t come from genuine users of an app. These are posted to inflate an app’s ranking or to harm a competitor’s.

What’s changing: We’re expanding the set of signals we use to determine whether a review is authentic. Because we’re applying these signals to existing reviews as well as new ones, a meaningful number of reviews that don’t meet our authenticity bar will be unpublished over the coming weeks.

What to expect: Because fake reviewers often leave reviews across many listings to appear more legitimate, some genuine apps may see reviews unpublished too. This isn’t a reflection of wrongdoing on your part but it’s a result of removing the untrustworthy activity connected to those reviews. Our goal is to ensure that the reviews that remain carry more weight. Unpublishing will roll out gradually as the backfill completes.

Why now

As the Shopify App Store grows, so does our responsibility to protect it. Fake and incentivized reviews undermine the trust merchants place in the review systems, and they create an uneven playing field for developers who play by the rules. A trustworthy App Store benefits everyone who builds honestly. These changes make our standards clearer, our enforcement more consistent, and the reviews merchants rely on more genuine.

What you should do

As you collect reviews, make sure you’re doing so honestly and fairly. These are some best practices we recommend:

  • Use the Reviews API to request reviews from merchants who actually use your app.

  • Ask in neutral language at the right moment. A simple “How’s your experience? Leave a review” after the merchant has used your app is fine. Offering anything in return is not.

  • Reply to negative reviews instead of trying to bury them. Merchants value developers who engage with feedback.

What’s next

This is the start of a broader investment in App Store quality. We’re continuing to improve automated detection, strengthen policy enforcement, and strengthen the overall health of a trustworthy ecosystem. App naming and duplication are priority areas we are tackling next, and work is already underway. We’ll share more on that soon.

The Shopify App Store should be a place where the best apps win. That’s what we’re building toward.

Have questions? Drop them below.

2

Awesome, thanks so much for starting to listen to the dev community!

I was doing a bit of digging earlier today, and it’s pretty crazy how far this problem goes back. It’s great to see that the honest devs making some noise about it have helped get things moving, and I really appreciate you and the team at Shopify taking steps to sort it.

I’m sure a lot of us are excited to see how this affects the App Store, aside from the dishonest developers, of course, who are hopefully feeling a little nervous.

Really hoping this finally leads to a better and more trustworthy App Store for both Shopify store owners and developers.

I’m sure the honest dev community will be keen to help with anything you need as this rolls out. A few of us know the App Store inside out and track reviews, removals, patterns, and suspicious activity pretty closely, so I’m sure we’ll all be keeping a close eye on how it pans out.

Let’s get this to a place where the best apps really can win.

3

Thanks for this, really appreciate Shopify putting something concrete out here.

I can see incentivised reviews are being addressed in the new policy, which is good. Removing a significant portion of the offending app’s reviews is also a real step forward.

The bit I’m still struggling with is whether that’s enough for repeat or deliberate abuse.

If a partner offered something like “leave a 5-star review and get the app free for life”, they weren’t making a small mistake or misunderstanding a vague rule. They were knowingly manipulating the App Store, misleading merchants, and gaining an unfair advantage over partners who played by the rules.

Even if half their reviews are removed later, they may already have benefited from months or years of better ranking, more installs, more revenue, and more merchant trust.

So I guess my question is: at what point does this become a partner trust issue, not just a review cleanup issue?

If a partner has deliberately gamed reviews, especially repeatedly or across multiple apps, why should they remain in the App Store at all? And what confidence should merchants have that the same partner is behaving properly in other areas, like app permissions, billing, support, or merchant data?

Review removal is good, but I do worry that if the worst consequence is “you lose some of the reviews you should never have had”, the incentive to abuse the system is still there.

4

Thanks for the update. Weren’t these practices already banned under the previous agreement?

The core issue is the lack of enforcement, not the wording of the rules. Once we start seeing real consequences for bad actors, like app suspensions or permanent bans, then I’ll be a believer.

6

What about actually archiving “outdated or less relevant” reviews and not just those for stores that go out of business?

What about shadow banning of shops’ reviews without informing them of why or presenting them with evidence of their “wrongdoing”

What about outstanding support requests for false reviews that support stonewalls on for months‽

7

The proof is in the pudding. Let me know when you see any results from this “action”

9

For sure. I like to stay positive and celebrate that this is a step in the right direction. We haven’t seen a concrete announcement like this from Shopify about fake reviews for a long time, so it’s definitely encouraging.

That said, I’ll of course be monitoring it closely and will continue adding my voice and sharing any findings.

10

When Shopify did the “Great Review Purge of 2025”, we lost about 30 legitimate five-star reviews in the span of an hour, which was a huge blow. It had taken almost 8 years to get to 100.

In exchange for deleting thousands of both legitimate and fake reviews, Shopify promised a fresh start, a balanced, fair, and open App Store. I recall answering some survey, or a forum post, that unless something serious is done to prevent fake reviews from going in again, there was no point in the purge.

Fast forward to now, we see that the fake review problem was, in fact, allowed to grow seemingly unchecked and even more blatantly, as documented by Ollie. If it wasn’t for his insistence, it’s not clear whether Shopify would’ve made new announcements.

I’m concerned this automated process will just be Purge 2.0, and that we might lose even more of the reviews we have left. Could we eventually go back to 0? Since last year’s “event”, I haven’t bothered to ask for reviews anymore.

Here’s hoping the process removes only the actual fake reviews and addresses the root of the issue. We’ll see how this is actually implemented, and with what level of care.

11

Were these form stores that went out of business?

You currently may have more reviews than are shown, and I am not talking about archived reviews. Shopify has been shadow banning reviews from legitimate long-operating stores. Reviews they have left across all apps, new reviews, recent reviews, and reviews from years ago. All hidden. The store will see the reviews when logged in but no one else will. Shopify won’t tell the shop owner why nor will they present any evidence of wrongdoing. When pressed for answers all they’ll say is “it’s filtered automatically”.

12

This sounds like a good step in the right direction!

As others have already said, the consequence seems limited. Partners can simply continue buying fake reviews or offering incentives like, “Use it free forever if you leave a 5-star review,” and then see which reviews stick and which ones don’t. I think there should be a bigger penalty for partners who are guilty of this, such as a permanent ban from Built for Shopify and delisting for one year. There needs to be a serious consequence; otherwise, they won’t stop.

Additionally, I hope this won’t be like the “great purge” from a few years ago. I’ve worked extremely hard to earn all my reviews, and I know each and every one is legitimate. I’d hate to see legitimate reviews removed again.

13

I’m not totally sure. At the time, I believe they used a term like “unhelpful” and “untrustworthy”: old reviews, or from closed stores, or too short ones, or ones that don’t provide “useful” info. Part of the classification was done by an AI, if I’m not mistaken.

“Helpfulness” and “Trustworthiness” can be subjective. I know that many of the archived reviews were definitely more than just “Nice app.” or “Works for me.”

Older reviews, I can agree, probably need less weight, but they can still show proof of consistency and a history of support, etc. There has to be a balance.

Curiously, the one-star review that was old, short, had spelling mistakes, and misleading information was left intact. I believe the system was heavy-handed against positive reviews, because it was trained to target fake ones, which are of course all positive.

I like that Shopify is paying attention to the problem. I’d just ask them to consider being careful with another purge.

14

Wasn’t the purge mostly due to Shopify changing the rules so that only stores on full paid plans could leave reviews?

That meant reviews from stores on trial periods, stores that left a review during a trial and then shut up shop, or stores on longer promotional plans like $1 per month for three months, were archived.

It was a really important move, because before that anyone could create a store, start a free trial, leave a review, and that was it. You didn’t even need to buy reviews, you could just make accounts.

15

Bad players buy fake and incentivized reviews. Now you try to remove these reviews. But these players already enjoy the benefits of a higher ranking. What’s the penalty? They just go back to the original state. I don’t understand.

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@Benny_Chan The reality is even worse. Removing fake reviews would only reset cheaters to baseline if Shopify’s system caught everything.

Since this ineffective automation will never catch every fake review, bad actors will still keep a net advantage. Legitimate developers are getting hurt by false positives.

Cheaters get to keep their unearned rankings while honest apps lose real reviews to a flawed algorithm. Shopify needs to penalize the actual accounts with suspensions and bans, rather than relying on sloppy automation that harms the wrong people.

I guess we will have to wait and see what actually happens, but I remain highly skeptical.

17

@Ollie_autoBlogger, if I remember correctly, Shopify said the purge was about removing what they classified as untrustworthy or unhelpful. I think the criteria was much more than just looking at reviews from stores on trial plans. They did mention the use of AI to do part of the classification, so they looked at the text too.

I’d say that pretty much all of the reviews we lost were not from free-trial or short-term stores. Most of our customers have physical stores with the POS, so their setup is more involved. I also read each review and kind of knew the stores they came from, from having interacted with the merchant at some point in most cases.

But, yes, blocking free-trial stores from adding reviews was a good idea. I just don’t know why they had to remove so many legitimate reviews in the process. It’s fair to re-adjust weights for old reviews and closed stores, but the process was a bit heavy-handed and opaque.
Anyway, thank you for your work in advocating for these changes.

18

They claim they’re archiving “outdated” and “irrelevant” reviews but this is not true. They’re archiving legit reviews from stores if the store goes out of business. The shop could have used your app for 5 years and left a detailed review but, once it goes out of business: archived. If a store does not pay and is shutdown: archived. If a store eventually pays the review will come back. I’ve seen this myself and spoken to others that confirm this.

If you have legit archived reviews I suggest that you check if the store is out of business —and share the results, of course :slight_smile:

They’re also shadow banning legit long-operating stores from leaving new reviews and hiding their old ones. Some of this may be tied in to the shop grating one collaborator access but, this is alone is not enough. There are other factors.

19

While it’s great to see Shopify taking some action in the fake reviews problems, I simply cannot see how this is going to make a big difference.

Moving the rule Partner Program Agreement to a dedicated App Store requirement (a pure bureaucratic move :slightly_frowning_face:) and stronger fake review detection won’t make a significant difference, and after a bit of buzz the things will return to the old norm.

When an app is found to be incentivizing reviews, we’ll remove a significant portion of its reviews. We’ve already identified apps engaged in this practice, and we’ll be enforcing this policy as soon as the change goes live.

The only difference is going to make is a much stronger punishment for such practices: from removing all the app reviews, 3 months of being unlisted until a complete ban of the partner account.

20

Had a small thought on the review-for-incentive side.

Could Shopify add a simple declaration step when a merchant leaves a review?

Before submitting, they’d have to tick something like:

  • I was not offered free access, money, credits, discounts, or anything else in exchange for this review

  • I was not asked to leave a specific star rating

  • This review reflects my actual experience using the app

Obviously this would not stop everyone. Some people will just tick the boxes and move on.

But it adds a bit of friction at the exact moment the review is being left, and might make some merchants pause if they were pushed or incentivised into doing it.

It also gives Shopify a much clearer line later if a partner is found to be manipulating reviews. They are not just breaking a vague policy, they are getting merchants to falsely confirm something during the review flow.

Maybe this has already been considered, and it is probably only a band-aid, but it feels like a fairly low-friction way to make review abuse a bit harder.

21

@Alex_Hooper I honestly don’t see how this will improve anything. Merchants who accept incentives already know what they are doing. They will just check the box to get their free app or discount.

This only adds annoying friction for honest merchants, while doing absolutely nothing to stop the bad actors who are actively cheating.

22

Yes, you make a fair point. I’m just grasping at straws a bit in desperation :sob: